Between the Sand-hills and the Sea
by meldahlie
Summary: The Duke of Galma's daughter, as Caspian said, squints and has freckles. But how did she feel when the King of Narnia returned with his bride? A sort of missing moment from the return voyage of The Dawn Treader.
1. One

Between the Sand-hills and the Sea

The Duke of Galma's daughter, as Caspian said, squints and has freckles. But how did she feel when the King of Narnia returned with his bride?

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For all the Narnian girls, older and younger.

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The island Duchy of Galma lies to the east of Narnia, two days sail from Cair Paravel. On its western shore, the waves roll in unbroken from the edge of the world, beating the shoreline bare and rocky. But on the eastern side, the little bays are sheltered, and edged with gentle beaches backed by sand-hills.

The grounds of the Duke of Galma's castle at the main port ran down to just such a beach, the windbreak of shore pines giving out onto the sand-hills in a tangle of wild roses. Here, stumbling among the bushes, a girl walked wildly. An observer might have thought she was either blind or drunk, for she walked heedless of where she went. Up or down slope, through or around the roses, feet slipping in the sand and dress snagging in every thorn, she simply walked. Walked – blind with tears and drunk with misery.

"Squints. And has freckles." Nerienne of Galma repeated that to herself, in a small desperate sob as she wrenched her skirts yet again out of the tangling roses and strode frantically on. "Squints. And has freckles. Freckles!" And she buried her face in her hands. "Squints!"

Squints, and has freckles. That was herself. All her life, she had been the Duke of Galma's daughter; the one on the miserable pedestal above any snow line of friendship; the one who squints and has freckles. None of the daughters of the Ladies-in-waiting had squinted, or had freckles in anything like the quantity she had them, when they had all been little girls. None of the Galmian belles nowadays squinted or had any freckles at all. It is easy to paint out freckles when you only have a few of them, not thousands.

But she had never really cared; that is, she had never really thought about it, _to_ care. _They_ were pretty; and _she_ squinted and had freckles; and life in Galma had gone on in a quiet and unremarkable way without anybody really bothering about it at all. Sometimes, when she got a new gown, Nerienne had looked at herself in the mirror and sighed a little, that she was not pretty to match the gown, but mostly she had just looked at the gown and thought about _it_ being pretty.

And then, at the start of last summer, the Narnians had come. Come with a dragon-prowed ship called _The Dawn Treader,_ and their new king, Caspian the Tenth. All the news over the previous three years had spoken of him as a great and mighty warrior, one to whom the Trees and the Talking Beasts had awoken again: it had been a surprise to find him a lithe, blond-haired lad several years younger than herself. Lithe, blonde, handsome – all the belles of Galma had been entranced by the young king; and it had been pleasant, in a very strange way, to be the one to whom such a hero paid attention to, as the daughter of the Duke of Galma. Never before had a young man with sparkling blue eyes done more than utter polite courtesies to her and then move on to someone who was not up and away on a ducal pedestal, someone who did not squint and have freckles.

All early summer days are beautiful, but those days of the Narnian visit seemed to Nerienne to have been perfectly golden, full of dances and picnics and the culminating splendour of the great tournament. She had sat in the ducal box, in a gown far prettier than herself, and felt her heart in her mouth every time King Caspian had entered the lists, felt agonies each time he fell and sheer delight when his was the victory. Then the Narnians had set sail again, towards the Lone Islands and the eastern edge of the world, in their quest for the lost friends of the King's father. Life on Galma had settled back into its normal pattern of things, touched here and there with occasional twinges of anxiety on Nerienne's part as to how the Narnian expedition might be getting on in their dangerous voyaging.

Winter had passed and spring had come and gone, and the early summer roses were blooming again on the shore, when word had suddenly flown across Galma, of the Narnian ship sighted on the horizon. There was no mistaking it: no Calormene trader or island privateer had such a glory of a shining dragon prow. " _The Dawn Treader! The Dawn Treader!"_ The name had raced through the streets as the great ship had drawn near, and the Duke and his family and retinue had had to have a way forced for them by the Palace guard through the crowds which had assembled at the harbour.

As they stood at the front of the crowd, her father clearing his throat again and again as he always did before having to make a formal address or welcome, Nerienne had been glad, for once, for that snow-line of ducal privilege; conscious also, as the boat-load of Narnians pulled away from the ship and towards the quay, that in her haste she had put on a gown which was definitely not her prettiest. But there had been no time to go back and change, no time to be vain, only to smile as the crowds had the privilege of cheering and the boat bumped against the quay.

King Caspian had sprung ashore, as lithe and blonde and handsome as before. And then before any word of greeting had been said, he had turned, and handed up his bride.

Nerienne could not remember the rest of it very well – only her. The Star's Daughter, a vision of exquisite shining beauty as fair as the brightest morning, that not one of the Galmian belles could ever dream of matching. And most certainly, not herself, the Duke of Galma's poor daughter with her squint and her freckles.

But even that, even that moment on the quayside, had not been the worst. The worst had been the great feast and ball which the Duke had called in honour of the Narnian King and Queen and their four recovered Lords. Lord Rhoop, Lord Argoz, Lord Revilian, Lord Mavramorn: Nerienne had learned their names off perfectly in those golden days of the previous summer, as King Caspian had repeated them over and over, always forgetting the last one and having to be prompted. Now, they had forms, faces – at least, she had been vaguely conscious of men with faces as she had curtseyed in welcome to them on the quayside while the herald proclaimed their names. They must have even bowed in reply, maybe spoken the polite nothings people say to a Duke's daughter. She couldn't remember, nothing except the Narnian Queen and her beauty.

The Narnian Queen in all her beauty had been at the feast and the ball; King Caspian beside her with eyes and time, quite rightly, for no-one else. Nerienne had worn her prettiest gown, not because it was pretty, but because it made her look plainer. Squints, and has freckles. That was herself. But when you are the Duke's daughter, you do not live just for yourself, even if you squint and have freckles. Galma was hosting visiting Royalty: the Duke's daughter must be polite, smile graciously, even dance.

The Captain of the Palace guard had taken her hand, for the first dance. Nerienne had not minded: he was grey-haired and fatherly and had a weakness for dancing, and had been so all her life. He asked every girl at every ball, one at a time working down the social order from herself. That had been the pattern ever since her very earliest ball attendance at the age of three, when they had danced a private little jig behind the Duke's chair. It had always been nice that she never had to worry who or if anyone would ask her to dance first; and it had been especially nice that night, in a dim way, that one thing didn't change.

Dim. The whole ball had seemed dim, in the light of the Narnian Queen's beauty. Nerienne had danced some dances; and people had forgotten her for quite a lot of the others; and she had been sitting at the dimmest end of the High Table, when she had noticed King Caspian and one of the Narnian lords standing close by. She had not heard what they were saying, above the merry tumult of the ball, but it had looked as if the King gestured towards herself and then turned back towards his queen, dismissing the other man with a brief nod. Nerienne had sat as if frozen, staring as the Narnian lord had turned and looked at her. Then he had walked over and – slowly, dutifully, pityingly – asked her for a dance.

Pity! It was the pity which drove her blindly along the shore, for never, never before had she been pitied to her face – not by someone was young and blonde and handsome as King Caspian – and never before _by proxy..._

She let out another self-flagellating sob: "Squints! And has freckles!" Tears welled up again, and she stumbled completely blindly through a tangle of roses, down a sudden slope in the sand-hills – and smack into a man.

Either he had been seated in a rather ungainly fashion beforehand, or the force of the collision had sent them both crashing to the ground. For a moment, Nerienne struggled in her thorny seat, and then the man scrambled to his feet – and her mouth dropped open in horror. She had fallen over the Narnian lord of yesterday.

It must have been the shock, for while she had been the Duke's daughter who squints and has freckles all her life, she had not habitually added rudeness to those crimes. Nerienne scrambled to her own feet before he could offer her a hand up. "You!" she cried passionately, vaguely conscious that she had stamped her foot at the same time. "You! You! You!"

And before he could speak, she turned, and fled away among the sand-hills.

The Duke of Galma's daughter was absent from the feast that night, due to a sick headache. It had, perhaps, been caused by something indigestible at lunch as the Narnian Lord Mavramorn was also noted to eat little and frown much. But sick headaches cannot last forever. The next morning, Nerienne considered her old Nurse's maxim somewhat ruefully: _Lies are like sea birds; they may fly for a while but they always come back to roost and make a mess when they do._

And it was, regrettably, true. Between the hunger brought on by a supper of weak herbal tea and a few oatmeal biscuits suited to a terrible headache, and the fear of the ducal physician being summoned if she had the headache much longer, Nerienne had gone down to breakfast. And while none of the Narnian lords had spoken to her, the Queen had expressed her sympathy and the King had enquired after the state of her head this morning. Nerienne had blushed until it felt like every freckle she had was on fire, and mumbled out that it was better, now, thank you – like a small child who has bumped themselves and made a fuss. Better now? She put a hand rather self-consciously to her head. It did ache this morning.

Nerienne got up and paced frantically across the room. There was a hawking party arranged for today, due to ride out quite soon. She could either go on it, and spend the day in the company of the King who pitied her and the Queen who outshone her and Lord Mavramorn who patronised her – or she could tell another lie and have another headache. It would only actually be an almost-lie this morning, her head felt so like it was going to burst – but worse than any potential twinges of conscience was the fact that the Narnian Queen had looked so beautifully and radiantly sympathetic at breakfast, Nerienne strongly suspected she would forgo the hunt and come to sit with the poor Duke's daughter with her squint and her freckles and her headache.

The entire situation was simply frightful! Nerienne stopped by her window and stared out, feeling rather like a condemned prisoner trapped on an inescapable island. She could see over the roofs of the palace down to the harbour. The Narnian royal pennant fluttering from the masthead of _The_ _Dawn Treader_ seemed to mock her. _'We'll be here for two more days!'_ it said. _'Then we'll sail away and you'll still be stuck here, with your squint and your freckles!'_

Squints! And has freckles! Some reserve of proper behaviour gave way in Nerienne. She wouldn't go on that hawking party! And she wouldn't stay here to be pitied by the Narnian Queen! And it wouldn't matter what they thought, if nobody could find her! She flung the door open, and rushed out without even a cloak. Along the corridors, down the backstairs. The castle hummed with preparations for the day's outing: servants hurried to and fro; everyone concentrating on the front doors and the courtyard where the horses were already being brought round. No one noticed Nerienne slipping out the side door to the deserted gardens, or down through the windbreak of pines to the sand-hills and the sea.

The shore was almost disappointingly peaceful – a soft, gentle breeze, little waves lapping, the scent of roses sweet and heavy in the sunshine. Nerienne felt she would have preferred it better with breakers smashing and foam churning, lashed under a grey autumn gale – but, at least, there was privacy. Solitude! Somewhere to walk and walk and walk! Not pitied! Not pestered! Not disturbed! They would not wait the hawking party for her – in fact, they must all have ridden off by now. Nerienne stopped, and pulled one fold of the skirt of her muslin breakfast gown, which she had not bothered to change, carefully free of the rose thorns – but it was stuck in a hundred other places too, and her few minutes of wild pacing so far had given it a dozen rents already, and – so what?! She abandoned the effort and tugged free with a nasty ripping noise.

So, her gown would be ruined. It was a lovely morning for riding out over Galma. The two facts seemed to go together, somehow. It was a lovely morning for riding out; and the Narnian king and queen would ride side by side, on the Duke's best pair of riding horses, with one each of his best gyr falcons on their wrists. And King Caspian would laugh and talk and smile with the Queen as he had with Nerienne last year – not because the Queen was the most beautiful woman in the world (though she was), but because she alone understood whatever those two understood when they looked at each other.

Nerienne stumbled up and down another sand-hill. At least she was spared having to see them. They would come back, of course, this evening, and then there would be the problem of how to explain her absence and how to survive another formal dinner, but perhaps if she stayed here by the sea all day, she would get sunburn. That would surely let her off, for who would want to dine, let alone dance, with someone who squints _and_ has freckles _and_ is as red as a boiled lobster as well? Then there would only be the problem of tomorrow, and then the morning of departure, and then the Narnians would be gone. They would pity her, of course, for being childish and easily ill, but that would be not much on top of being pitied for squinting and having freckles. They would go away, and life on Galma would settle back into its monotonous routine with a squint and freckles.

The prospect stretched out suddenly before her. Life on Galma would settle back into its monotonous routine with a squint and freckles. Just like before. Except that in the reflected light of the golden days of last summer and the radiant beauty of the Narnian queen this summer, 'just like before' was bleak and empty and desolate. Nerienne stopped and stared blankly. Life would be just like before. Awful; unfriendly; solitude-above-the-snow-line; on and on like the sea running out to the horizon. And the vague, uncertain dreams of something else which had bloomed last summer, of a new world so different she could not really visualise it, would be gone with the _Dawn Treader._

She did not think, exactly. Her mind, her eyes, everything seemed frozen, rather like a rabbit caught in the glare of a bright lantern. But very slowly and very automatically, she stepped backwards into a little bowl-like hollow in the sand-hills, and sank down to the ground to hide her face in her hands.

A footfall in the sand. A man's voice. "Your Ladyship?"

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 _A/N: World borrowed from CS Lewis; title borrowed from Vera Brittain's 'Testament of Youth.'_


	2. Two

Between the sand-hills and the sea

 _A/N: and they could hardly be left on that cliff-hanger, could they...?!_

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"Your Ladyship?"

 _NO!_ She didn't need to look up – she didn't need to see – for it was Lord Mavramorn. Anyone, anyone, to find her hiding on the shore, even King Caspian himself, would have been better.

A wild, wordless gasp escaped her, and then a rush of anger lifted her to her feet. How dare he stay behind from the hawking party to follow her and pity her! Nerienne flung up her head and glared at him. "Excuse me, please!" There was nowhere to flee to, this time. The little hollow in the sand-hills was rimmed in with thick tangles of roses, and the path into it was too narrow to get past him without actually knocking him down. "Excuse me!"

"Your Ladyship," Mavramorn repeated somewhat woodenly. "I beg your pardon, for I seem to have disturbed you yet again."

The same polite, patronisingly distant tones with which he had asked her to dance! Nerienne shook her head. "Excuse me, _please!_ "

"And I would beg your pardon for having intruded my very person upon your walk yesterday," Mavramorn continued, his voice a little hotter, "but I fear I have in some way offended you further than that, and so my appeal would be of little value."

It would have been proper and polite to deny it; it would have been less proper but discrete to simply ask yet again to be excused. The only merit Nerienne could think of for what she did say was that it was, at least, truthful: "You asked me to dance!" Her foot stamped itself in a surge of fresh anger. "Out of pity! Pity! King Caspian spoke to you, and told you to take pity on the poor girl with the squint and the freckles, and you did! Patronisingly! Pityingly! As if you were dancing with a stick! And now you follow me! And I may squint! And I may have freckles! And I may not be as beautiful as the Queen! Or get asked to dance at balls! But I don't need pity! Pity! Pity! Pi-i-i-"

She stammered to a halt. Not because the small sensible voice at the back of her mind had been objecting that was no way to speak to anyone, let alone a visiting Narnian Lord; but because at her wild outburst, Lord Mavramorn looked not puzzled, nor startled, nor angry, nor pitying, nor even abashed. He most resembled a sad spaniel that has been abruptly and mercilessly kicked.

For one moment, there was silence between them. Then Mavramorn bowed slowly, politely, and stepped as far to one side of the narrow path as he could. "I beg your pardon for detaining you, Your Ladyship."

She could go. But Nerienne's anger seemed to have fled faster than she herself had done yesterday, at the sight of the strange hurt in Lord Mavramorn's eyes. "I, I-" she faltered.

He shook his head, somewhat dully. "It does not matter. It were a small thing, but such were ever my undoing."

"It wasn't a small thing," Nerienne objected. "I flew into a temper and shouted at you." She blushed at the memory of yesterday and today. "I- I shouldn't have."

"I have offended you on one day, inadvertently knocked you down on the next and disturbed your solitude today." Mavramorn looked at her gravely. "I may have been so long out of the ways of men I feel as if I have forgotten whatever courtliness I ever knew, yet that catalogue of error seems one that even the most uncouth and isolated hermit in the deserts of Calormen would be ashamed of. But your justifiable anger at such treatment was not the small matter of which I spoke." He looked down. "I have no honour on which to assure you that things were not as they have seemed, but at least I can offer you the word of one whose honour is all Narnia, that my King spoke not as you have thought."

Lord Mavramorn looked back up at Nerienne, with a smile bright, bitter, self-flagellating. "The King merely stopped to remind me that if I did not feel like dancing, I need not make myself do so for his sake." Mavramorn laughed, a brief, mirthless noise. "And I thought I had made a fair business, in hiding that I was sore and sick at heart. But since I had not, I looked around for some corner to crawl into, away from those whose hearts are true and bright enough to dance, and then I saw you. And it seemed to me then, for which presumption I have sought you out this morning to beg your pardon on my worthless self, that you looked as if you would understand. As if you too, stood among that merry multitude with a face that smiled and a heart that cried out for being different and left behind."

Nerienne blinked. "But you don't squint or have freckles," she distantly heard her own voice saying. She cringed instantly, for he would laugh. Laugh, or be offended, and probably the latter, for there was silence from her companion – but no mirth or anger grew in Mavramorn's eyes as she stared, waiting for it. He simply looked more and more like the sad, kicked spaniel.

"Aye," he said after a while. "And there I have earned my fate, it would seem, as you have not."

"But how? I mean-" Nerienne gasped, as she realised what she had managed to say. "I mean – I squint and have freckles, and – and so nobody dances with me – or talks to me – or is anything other than polite to the Duke's poor daughter with the squint and the freckles. They all go and dance with the Galmian belles instead, who have few enough freckles to be able to paint them out! But last summer, he – King Caspian – he did – about his new kingdom – the Beasts and Trees awakened – and the newly unified court – and the new castle at Cair Paravel – and – and now –"

"And now he has returned with his Queen?" Mavramorn interrupted gently as Nerienne stuttered into humiliated incoherence. "And the four lost friends of his father? And you wonder how I, the sought, the found, the honoured friend of the King, am also looking alone at the closed door to a new world through which everyone else has gone?"

 _The closed door to a new world..._ Yes, that was exactly how it was. And everyone else, it seems, has gone through it. Nerienne nodded thoughtfully – and too late realised she had inadvertently answered his rhetorical questions in the affirmative.

"What do you know of this Aslan?"

Mavramorn spoke before Nerienne could even start to try and say she had, yet again, not meant to be as rude and nosy and improper as she had, yet again, managed to be. _What do you know of this Aslan?_ The question was so – so – so queer, Nerienne's mind reeled, quite forgetting any explanations or apologies. _This Aslan?_

Galma had not forgotten the Great Lion and His Father the Emperor Over the Sea , in the way the Telmarines of Narnia had. People still exclaimed 'By the Lion's Mane!' and when _T_ _he Dawn Treader_ had set sail to the east last year, the old women on the quayside had wiped their eyes and murmured 'Aslan guide him' in all sincerity. But herself – anyone – on a day-to-day scale? Aslan was just – a fact. Rather like the city gates. They were there, and they were a defence, if the city should ever be attacked over land from the rest of Galma, and it was nice to know that. But somebody else took care of them, and you never saw them used and really, at least for the Duke of Galma's daughter, you never thought about them at all.

Of course, while that was true, it was not at all a proper answer.

"Aslan is, er – the Great Lion; the, er- the Son of the Emperor Over the Sea-" Nerienne stopped, horribly conscious of how prim and hollow her answer was coming out. But Mavramorn was standing, looking out at the sea as if he barely heard her.

"Aye," he said softly, not taking his eyes off the distant horizon. "And there you know far more than I did. I had heard the word, once. From the screaming lips of a dwarf in the palace torture chambers. Nay, probably twice." Mavramorn shook his head, slowly. "It was probably the word he whispered as he died."

His lips worked silently for a moment, as though words would not come, and then he turned back to look at Nerienne, his face bleak and grey. "And that was all, quickly pushed aside. And then... I do not know how to begin this."

He said it as if it were a real trouble to him, not a polite excuse. Nerienne whet her lips anxiously. "At the beginning?" she suggested.

For one moment an odd, faint, haunted smile, rather than the bitter one, passed across his face. "That were indeed a good place to begin. So, at the beginning. Last year – nay –"

Lord Mavramorn put the heel of his hand to his forehead in confusion. "Nay," he repeated, "I am told it is many years ago, although it seems to me but yesterday, my good friend and sovereign (though I concede he was but a poor monarch to our land) King Caspian the Ninth died, and men whispered that his brother had more than a hand in his demise. Nothing could be proven, of course. Nothing was deeper than the sorrow with which Miraz mourned his elder brother. But one by one, and none too slowly, the supporters of the late king died – or went missing – or were said to have gone mad. Until, at last, there were only the seven of us."

Mavramorn shrugged. "Perhaps Miraz had tired of covering his hands in blood. Perhaps he feared some sort of rebellion if we, the last followers of Caspian, were threatened or killed. Perhaps he saw me for the weak and self-serving man I proved to be. For he came to us with fair words: a voyage to bring great wealth and fame and glory to the land of Narnia and the race of Telmar and the as yet uncrowned infant king; a voyage to seek new lands beyond the sunrise."

"And," Mavramorn's voice grew bitter with regret, "we heeded his words. We failed our trust to our dead friend and late king, to guard and keep his son were he not there to do so; and took ship. Perhaps some of us sailed in fear; I sailed for the glory and adventure – I have always been a hasty and impetuous man." He held out both hands bleakly. "Adventures, we found, by the score. Bern, Octavian, Restimar, Rhoop, even our crew we left or lost along the way; until the three of us alone, in a wreck of a ship that would scarce bear water, limped into that last Island of the Star."

His head bowed and his voice dropped to even greater bitterness. "There, we quarrelled. Argoz was for remaining, Revilian for returning to Narnia. I think his conscience had always troubled him the most about Miraz and the young Caspian. And I – I sought to go on, and in a bid to force my companions to bow to my blind will, I laid a hand upon the Stone Knife on the feast table."

Mavramorn shook his head. "Amidst all that gracious provision, more food than we had seen for many years, let alone on our voyage, I did that. The next I knew, it was as though the years had rolled back, not forward. For my King, as young and fair as I remembered him from his boyhood – yet with some finer light behind his face – stood beside me. And I learned he was not the man I thought, but that infant king with whom I had broken faith, who had travelled to the edge of the world to seek us. To seek me!"

Mavramorn shook his head again. "Me! And so, all winter I have been learning of all that has passed, and that the strange light and fairness and true nobleness of our king came from this Aslan, who rules all lands and whose especial country Narnia is. In all that I could forget: forget what I had done; forget the years I had lost; forget the lands beyond the sunrise I had not found. But in the spring, when the weather opened, our king must of course return to Narnia. So we set sail, but though I will follow my king to the depths of the underworld, my heart was sore to set sail away from the sunrise. And then on the way-"

Mavramorn knit his eyebrows together in puzzlement. "On the way, one by one, it would seem my companions have met this Aslan. They do not speak of it, certainly not one of them would boast or be proud of it – but it makes some kind of barrier between them, those friends and journey-mates of mine – and myself. When we reached the Lone Islands, I was the only man on board who had not this sort of shining goldenness of spirit about him. I watched for those islands, as eagerly as I had longed for them to sink behind the horizon on the eastward voyage. For there, I had been told, my Lord Bern was now Duke, and he had been my oldest and dearest friend. And between he and I, I thought, there would be the old ties of friendship and no barrier of golden spirit, for he at least had not been on this strange voyage where men meet their god." Mavramorn stopped, and there was a long silence.

"And then?" Nerienne prompted, laying one hand on his arm as if to try and steady him against the blow she could feel was about to come.

He looked down at her hand, and laid his own over it and held it tightly, like a child seeking comfort. "You have guessed," he said dully. "Never had I seen a brighter or more shining face than that of my lord the Duke of the Lone Islands. He had met with the Great Lion only that morning, walking on the cliff-tops watching for our returning sail."

Mavramorn laughed again, even more harshly and mirthlessly than before. "Pity? You talk of being pitied?! Pity the man who spent every spare hour he had on those islands walking the cliff-tops amidst the seagulls and the sheep – looking, searching, wanting–" His voice broke. "Wanting to be like the others. But there was nothing. Only the knowledge I had avoided all the voyage: that what I have done has put me beyond any such meeting."

He looked down at his arm, and then gently lifted her hand off and let it go. "Forgive me. I have faced the risk of death in battle, and I have faced what my countrymen and my king's brother and murderer thought was certain death at sea – but I am finding this restored life a little difficult to face at present. It were uncourtly of me to have expounded it on you."

"Sometimes it helps to – talk." Nerienne folded her hands together, uncertain at this sudden putting-up of barriers. "And besides," she added, "I think I did ask."

"To talk?" Mavramorn considered her. "Do you find so?"

"I come down here and talk to myself," Nerienne explained with hasty frankness. "When I find I just can't face the idea of tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." He sighed. "Tomorrow, I shall try and make myself useful in the stowing of a ship that flows as smoothly as the tides without me. When enough sailors have said 'No, Sir,' and 'Excuse me, Sir' and 'Not there, please, Sir,' I shall make my excuses to the king and find some quiet corner where I will not be under anyone's feet."

The matter-of-fact way Mavramorn said it gave Nerienne a sudden, odd pang. "You – you could come back here," she said quickly.

He looked round, at the sand-hills and the roses and the gently lapping sea. "It is a nice place for those who are sore at heart. But would I not disturb your Ladyship's own walk, yet again?"

Nerienne blushed. "If I knew you were coming … then I wouldn't … trip over you. Or shout. And it would be nice to have some company for once," she finished in an embarrassed rush.

Mavramorn seemed to consider this for a long moment. Then he inclined his head, gravely. "Then it would only be the least politeness, if Your Ladyship wishes for some company."

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 _To be continued..._


	3. Three

Between the sand-hills and the sea

Mavramorn was there before her, a grey-haired figure with bent head pacing slowly among the sand-hills as Nerienne hurried down through the shore pines. All her tumult of fears: that he mightn't be there; that she might have seemed too nosy or too forward or just too squinting; or that he might have regretted telling her all that he had, or found her troubles tiresome; or that King Caspian might have found something else for him to do; or just that she might have missed him; all those anxieties lifted in a joyful rush like a flock of gulls clearing from the shore.

Then they hovered, like the same flock of gulls, wheeling and waiting overhead. Because Lord Mavramorn was – different. They met differently, it was true, seeing each other come through the sand-hills. He bowed, and she curtseyed, and then they walked on, along the shore, in and out of the winding valleys of sand, avoiding the tangling roses, but it seemed to Nerienne that they talked differently, too. There was – something; some barrier, that seemed to make it impossible to say more than common-place remarks. And between the common-places, were silences. Not bitter ones like yesterday, just the silences of not knowing what to say.

She tried again, with something from yesterday when it had been possible to talk. "Did it take long for enough sailors to say ' _No sir,_ _E_ _xcuse me sir, and_ _N_ _ot there, sir'_?"

"What? Oh, no..." Mavramorn shook his head. "I did not trouble to find out. I felt I could say those to myself without delaying the readying of the ship by my presence. I came to here, to the shore, instead."

"I see," said Nerienne, and the silence came on again. How long had he been here? She had guessed he might be walking here, waiting, when he did not join the party of Narnians returning to the palace for lunch from their morning's work on _The Dawn Treader_ ; but what about breakfast? All the Narnians except the Queen had been gone down to their ship first thing, for they must sail on the early tide the next morning and King Caspian was eager, so the Queen had said, to see that all was ready – but had Lord Mavramorn joined them then at all?

Nerienne glanced sideways at him. That same grave, sad spaniel expression had not lifted once in all their walk. Not even when they had met, and she had said, quite truthfully, 'I _am_ glad to see you!' She _had_ been glad: the thought of someone to talk with on the shore today had stayed with her like a small, bright candle-flame all through yesterday; but if anything, Mavramorn had looked for a moment more sad, more desolate, as she had said it.

Perhaps it had only been her imagination. Or perhaps he was only being polite in accepting her company, and his regret in being disturbed had shown for a moment, before he had hidden it behind the courtly bow and patient conversation. Nerienne searched for something more interesting to say, hunting back in her mind for the sort of bright, cheerful things King Caspian had talked to her about in the golden summer last year. Narnia, mostly: the Animals, the Trees, the new castle; and then his voyage, and the six lords he could remember and the one he was always forgetting; and then the entertainments the Galmians had laid on.

She skimmed back over the picnics and hunts and the great tournament at the end, a vague feeling of them all having been a lot longer ago than just last summer. But then, all her memory seemed to be playing tricks over the time spans. How much she had fluttered over the idea, unsaid but all too known, that her father was hoping Caspian might be pleased to marry her. How badly she had minded – was it just four days ago? – the arrival and the beauty of his Queen. It seemed somehow, walking now between the sand-hills and the sea, as if all that emotion had belonged to somebody else, to some much younger sister. To go on, just walking here, for evermore, would be perfect – if only she could think of something to say. That mattered a lot, for this was, of course, the last conversation. Tomorrow would be only the formal leave taking between the Narnian Royal party and the Duke and his family. A polite bow, a polite curtsey, and then Mavramorn would be gone.

Strange that you could be sorry to part from someone who had been the last person in the world you had wanted to see, only the day before – but at this point, the here-and-now silence seemed to have gone on just too long, and Nerienne hauled her thoughts well away from the empty future and back to the urgent need to find something to say. Her mind coughed up the kind of remark usual to the day before a departure before she could stop it:

"I suppose this time the day after tomorrow, you will be back in Narnia."

She could have bitten her tongue out the next moment, but there is no way to call words back. They just hung there, evidence that she was nothing but stupid and freckled with a squint. Mavramorn's face did not change. "Aye," he said gravely. "The Lord Drinian said we should be in sight of land tomorrow evening, and then – I presume Narnia will be glad to see its king after a whole year away."

"You presume?" said Nerienne, puzzled. Independent Galma had been delighted to see King Caspian back. Surely his own country-?

"I presume," Mavramorn repeated. "Because I cannot imagine it." He raised and dropped his hands in a sort of empty, hopeless gesture. "A land of fauns and walking Trees and talking Beasts and this strange golden glory that our King bears – I cannot picture it." He swallowed. "Only the dwarves."

Nerienne clutched her hands together tightly. It was all too clear what he was remembering, and the pain in his voice made her want, rather desperately, to put one hand on his arm again and try to comfort him. But that had been yesterday, and the strange barrier of today made it impossible; not to mention that it was her own fault for reminding him. "What is it that you will do, once you are back?" she asked hastily, searching for some positive aspect of the future.

"Do?" Mavramorn echoed. "I shall be welcomed and greeted and fêted with the rest of them, and I shall be glad with every fibre of my being that the Queen is with us, and so will distract matters, as it were. And after that?" He raised his shoulders in another dull shrug. "My friend's son will provide for me and honour me as a noble-hearted king does his father's friends – and I shall fear every day that he is wrong to do so, that I am … pollution of some kind. But he will do so, no matter what. And thus I shall live out my days – a useless ornament at court, save for any function as a warning to other foolhardy adventurers."

"Are adventurers foolhardy?" Nerienne queried, trying to find some way to defend his voyaging against this harsh self-judgement, but she did not seem to have found the right words. Mavramorn smiled bitterly.

"To seek to seize by force the lands beyond the sunrise which I am now told are Aslan's country alone?" For a moment, the bleakness of yesterday showed on his face. "Aye, foolhardy does not really seem a strong enough word, does it?" Then the bright, bitter barrier came back. "So, that is what I shall do."

"I shall stay here," said Nerienne, not knowing quite why she said it, unless it was that his bitterness had uncovered her own again. "I shall stay here," she repeated, all too aware her voice was growing petulant and quite unable to stop it. "And squint and have freckles and be alone above the snow-line! And someday when I am too grey and middle-aged to care any longer, I shall be married off, to some wealthy guildsman or merchant trader who wants the connection to the ducal house too badly for his business to mind about the squint or the freckles!"

There was silence from her companion, and it seemed about a century or two before Nerienne dared to lift her face and look at him. They had stopped walking, and Mavramorn was standing, quite rigid, his gaze fixed out on the sea. Nerienne blushed. Hadn't she said yesterday she wouldn't shout? And now she had burst out afresh, with things you did not shout at anyone, certainly not a visiting Narnian Lord and especially not one with troubles of his own to face, nor one-

"I know," said Mavramorn suddenly, and his hand clenched into a fist on the folds of his tunic. "I know."

His voice shook slightly, but what he said made no sense.

"Know what?" Nerienne asked, forgetting yet again any resolution to be less inquisitive and more lady-like.

Mavramorn carried on staring out to sea. "That when I sat on this shore two days ago and thought in comfortable, self-pitying ignorance – nay, arrogance! – that life could not be any bleaker, I was wrong."

"I didn't mean – that my life was – bleak – I mean – not bleaker than – yours," Nerienne stammered out hastily.

"Nor did I mean that!"

Nerienne blinked, for something in her foolish words seemed to have breached some reserve in Lord Mavramorn. The dull, bitter voice was suddenly gone. He turned sharply, caught her hands so tightly that they hurt, and his face – in his face was something, not the same as but akin to, the way Nerienne had seen King Caspian look at his Queen. She stared at him, and the candle-flame of warmth from yesterday seemed to grow and grow – into something huge – glowing – unbelievable – and real.

"No!" said Mavramorn, his voice hoarse and desperate. "No! I did not mean to tell you! I have walked here all morning steeling myself that I must not tell you – that it is not for me to say that had I my old estate, or the meanest rag of the poorest landless freeman in all Narnia, or even nothing but the share in his ship that a sailor has – would I ask you to come with me! Not out of pity! Out of love – because you understand! Because I love you!"

The fair ladies of legend and the Galmian belles with no freckles accepted their suitors with gracious and charming words. They did not struggle frantically through the strange joy filling their minds with wool, and say: "But I tripped over you … and shouted."

Perhaps he had been right when he said he had forgotten whatever courtliness he ever knew, for the noble suitors of the same legends did not laugh. But Nerienne found she did not mind, for Mavramorn's laugh was a thing like a burst of sunshine – before the cloud of desolate misery rushed back across his face.

"Don't!" he said, desperately. "Don't! Because it cannot be!"

A single gull cried, a harsh, wild cry; and Nerienne's mind was suddenly clear, even empty and a little echoing. "Why?"

Mavramorn looked down, at where he still held her hands. "Because – because I have nothing, my Lady," he said quietly, too quietly, after a moment. "Nothing but the King's bounty, and even that on the strength of a friendship one generation removed."

There was a long silence. Then Mavramorn shook his head. "Nay, that were a lie – and you know it." He raised his head again, and looked at her, bleaker and greyer and more desolate than she had ever seen. "You know," he said. "You know why."

Nerienne took a step towards him. "But I would come," she said softly. "I would come!"

His grip on her hands tightened. "Have I not even now proved myself to be yet a man hasty and impetuous, to bring sorrow on his friends as well as himself by it?"

There was a long pause. Then Nerienne swallowed carefully, for you cannot refute someone's claim to have brought sorrow on you by crying. "So you must go?"

Mavramorn turned to stare out at the sea. "Aye. Take my guilt and go; while you bide here, alone. And live out my days knowing that though a man and a woman may be made and meant for each other, despite the leagues of sea between them – and that is not a dream, for I have seen Their Majesties – it is not possible for someone who has done what I have done." He slipped one hand free of Nerienne's and looked at the palm. "It was cold," he said. "I knew that for one moment, before that enchanted sleep came on us. Cold, and black, and evil."

"But you didn't know," Nerienne protested.

He laughed, that mirthless bitter laugh again. "I should have done. Is that not the greater crime? And if it was only ignorance-" Mavramorn broke off to gesture round at the empty shore line. "Why? Why?"

In itself, the question made no sense. In relation to yesterday, it did. Nerienne swallowed again. "Should I not have asked you to come back here today?"

Very, very gently, Mavramorn raised her hand and for the briefest moment, kissed it. "Nay," he said gravely. "I ought not have told you, and I would give anything to have done, just for once, that which I ought and not rushed on in haste – but though the sky falls and the world ends because of it, I would not have _not_ told you!" Then his bitter smile crept back. "Not, 'tis true, that the old world ends. It goes on and on, and there is no new world, whatever a man may dream."

"There _is_ a new world," Nerienne objected, thinking of Caspian and his Queen, and that new land of Narnia – which she, like Mavramorn, could not quite picture. "There _is_ ," she repeated, blinking to not cry. "It is just that the door is shut to you and I."

And a Voice, deep and great and terrible and golden, spoke behind her: "The door to the new world is always open."

The speaker was a lion.

Nerienne had never seen a lion, not for real. Large cat, mane, golden, was the general gist she had gathered from the highly stylised lions on the shields and banners of the Narnians and woven in the palace tapestries. By that description, it could have been any lion – except there were no lions on Galma – and any lion would have made the description totally inadequate. But no other lion would have such a voice, that seemed to shake the earth; nor the strange golden radiance about Him, that made the sunshine dim by comparison; nor the majesty in His eyes. Beyond all doubt, the Great Lion stood before them.

Nerienne swept a curtsey, but Aslan did not look at her. His great, unfathomable eyes fixed on Lord Mavramorn. "Son of Adam?"

Lord Mavramorn had not bowed. He simply stood there, and stared at Aslan, his face seeming even greyer in comparison to the Lion's golden mane. There was silence; a great, expectant silence in which it seemed all noise had ceased, and all movement had stopped, except for the steady breathing of the Lion. He said nothing more, but it seemed to Nerienne as if He had, in some way; as if some huge question hung in the air, far greater than those three, simple words.

Then Mavramorn shook his head, slowly, slowly. "It is impossible," he said, hollowly. "Impossible."

"You sought a land fairer than that of Miraz," said Aslan, his voice deeper and sterner than before. "You have sought again on your return. Now you have found, will you refuse? You have held the relic of the price that was paid – will you say anything is impossible for Me?"

The gulls cried, the sea murmured, and there was another great silence while Aslan and Mavramorn looked at each other, as still as the stone statues of the White Witch Nerienne remembered being told of in the old tales. It was told also, in those old stories, of how the two Queens and the High King saw their brother and betrayer Edmund talking with Aslan – but the stories did not tell of the fear of that watching for those three who loved him; fear that wrung your hands and made a lump in your throat and filled your eyes with tears, until you could not see the man and the Lion, standing motionless between the sand-hills and the sea...

And then, through the mist of tears, Nerienne saw Mavramorn move. He did not bow like a nobleman; nor salute like a soldier; he simply dropped to his knees and dropped his head onto the Lion's paw, and his shoulders shook with a storm of weeping in the way of a sailor who has been shipwrecked and has despaired of land, and has returned at last to his home port.

Aslan bent His head over Mavramorn, but whatever He said, Nerienne did not hear. It felt, quite suddenly, as if she was a thousand leagues away from them. Her mind vaguely registered that she should have been glad. She should have been glad, yes … but Nerienne felt numb. Lord Mavramorn had found what he sought, and she-? She was alone, again. Ignored, forgotten, side-lined with her squint and her freckles. _L_ _ooking alone at the closed door to a new world through which everyone else has gone…_

And now the one person who had understood that, the one whose words those were, had gone and left her too. As he had said, _'_ _it makes some kind of barrier between them_ _and myself …_ _this strange voyage where men meet their god.'_

 _T_ _heir god?!_ A tiny, angry flicker sprang up in Nerienne. The Telmarines had known nothing of Aslan! They had forgotten, while Galma had remembered – as Mavramorn himself had said, there you know far more than I did! Had he not asked her _'What do you know of this Aslan?'!_

He had not even known of Aslan, and now – here and now Mavramorn had done nothing! He had not even bowed! And she had curtseyed; a proper, courteous greeting! And yet – and yet the Lion had looked at him! Not a glance at herself!

Nerienne blinked away a few hot, angry tears. Squints and has freckles, poor girl – yet again! But the Lion had made her with the squint and the thousand freckles, as her old Nurse had said so many wearisome times. He had no reason to brush her aside because of them! Had she not believed in the new world of restored Narnia, even as Mavramorn denied it?! As for Mavramorn – what did he know-?!

 _What do **you** know of this Aslan?'_ asked the echo in her mind, even as the Lion Himself stood before her. And Nerienne's mind stopped as abruptly as she had done crashing into Lord Mavramorn two days ago. What _did_ she know? Of _'this Aslan'?_

She had known of Him, spoken of Him in the proper times and places, grown up listening to the old tales of the Golden Age of Narnia. But – but – but that was all. That was all...

Nerienne's breath felt as if it was coming very much more slowly, as if some anxiety smothered the very air around her. And maybe it was her squint, or maybe those hot, angry tears – but she seemed to be looking at everything from very far away; seeing a strange tableaux on the shore from a great distance. The Lion stood on that shore, and two people stood before him: one crying out in humility and longing and self-despair; the other proper and courteous and indifferent.

Proper. Proper stood on one side and was angry – and afraid. And as slowly and steadily and truly as the joy had grown when Mavramorn had said he loved her, the truth grew coldly clear in her mind. To know that He existed was not the same as knowing Him – even the Calormenes believed in the existence of the Great Lion of Narnia!

To know Him meant something more – something that lent this golden radiance to the hearts and faces of those who did. And to find that, meant to search and to look and to act on what you knew, as Mavramorn had done on the cliffs of the Lone Islands and she had never done, in her grumbling about the squint and the freckles. Squints, and has freckles! She had always felt as if that was all anybody she met cared about, brushing her aside as the Duke's daughter with the squint and the freckles. But was it all that she had ever cared about? A great burden she had clung to, ignoring all that did matter as the Lion was now ignoring her? A barrier – except there wasn't a barrier – not now. Only this narrow, three-foot gap – between herself and the Son of the Emperor Over the Sea – and it felt like a mile.

There was a new world. But the door was-?

It would be improper to interrupt, to speak without being spoken to. "Aslan," said Nerienne, "I didn't bother. I never thought. I- I-"

Perhaps it had not been too improper to speak, for the Lion's eyes as He turned at last to look at her seemed not angry or displeased, only waiting. Nerienne held out her hands. "I – I think I have been as much a fool as that Horse in the old stories."

"Happy the one who learns that, be they Horse or Human, Daughter of Eve."

And quite suddenly it was clear to Nerienne why Mavramorn had fallen to his knees, that there was no other way to agree that the impossible was possible. And the Lion's voice was very gentle as His great head bent towards hers: "Daughter of Eve, do you know what has come of your waiting?"

She looked up, into that great golden face, where her face was reflected in His eyes; and beyond that the roses on the sand-hills; and somehow, beyond them, or through them, a life was reflected. A life dull, and shallowly content, and empty, clinging to its grudges and walking blindly, and yet there was a path in it she had not noticed before, running like a golden thread from the Lion's mane. To the sand-hills and the sea; to the Lion Himself; to the man beside her who had needed and would always need someone else who had not – before that time – found the new world and the open door to it; the man whose hand took hers even as she said "Yes."

And there was a sound in the Lion's voice that could only be a purr. "Remember: the way is always open for all who truly seek it. For I am the Opener of the Door. Go through it together." One great, golden paw with its terrible, terrible claws in the deepest of velvet sheaths was laid upon their joined hands, and the movement seemed to release the magic that had held their gazes on Him. Nerienne looked at Mavramorn as he looked back at her, and saw the golden shining-ness of the Lion reflected on his face as it must be on hers.

And then the weight on their hands was gone, and Aslan was gone, and the faint goldenness still lingered on Mavramorn's face where it had before been bleak and grey. "My lady," he said after a moment, or maybe it was a minute, or maybe hours, in this slowness of joyful time the Lion had left behind him. "My lady, I spoke of having nothing but the King's bounty..."

"And it was true," said Nerienne softly.

"Aye." Mavramorn stopped. "For both of us."

Both of us. Both of us. It seemed – surprising, somehow, since nothing was impossible for Him, that there should be room for more joy than that of looking into the Lion's eyes – but there was. And Mavramorn seemed to read her mind in her smile, and drew her hand to his lips. "Will you come, Nerienne? To this new world?"

And it mattered not the least that she squinted, or had freckles.

~:~:~

Historical Note: In the records of Narnia, it is clear that _The Dawn Treader_ sailed from Galma for Narnia a week later than had been planned. As Lady Mavramorn said ever after, it was debatable whether the Queen or the King had been more radiantly and sympathetically delighted at the reason for the delay.

~:~:~:~:~

 _A/N: And so, that is the end of the story, though obviously only the beginning for Lord and Lady Mavramorn! Also, lest anyone thinks the roses on the beach were romantic embroidery, I must explain that I borrowed the beach (roses, dunes and shore-pines) from a little island in the Funen archipelago of Denmark, where I spent my childhood holidays between the sand-hills and the sea._

 _Thank you, everyone, for reading!_

 _~:~:~:~:~_


End file.
